Nica: Helms-Bush Candidate Says He's Ahead in the Vote

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Monday November 5 4:27 AM ET (via yahoo)

Nicaragua Ruling Party Claims Election Lead

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaragua's conservative ruling party celebrated
what its leaders believed to be a presidential election victory over
leftist Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega early on Monday.

Official results had not yet come in and the ruling Liberal Party
stopped short of formally declaring victory but it said all the
evidence showed their candidate, 73-year-old businessman Enrique
Bolanos, had a strong lead over Ortega.

`All the trends, all the numbers we have on a national level, all the
election returns that have come in are positive, they are
encouraging, the margins are wide,'' Bolanos spokesman Alejandro
Fiallos told reporters early on Monday morning.

Hundreds of Liberal Party supporters held noisy celebrations at a
Managua hotel while Ortega's followers in the Sandinista National
Liberation Front were in subdued mood.

Ortega was swept to power in the 1979 Sandinista revolution and then
led Nicaragua in a bitter civil war against U.S.-backed Contra rebels
throughout the 1980s. He was voted out of office in 1990 and lost
another election six years later, but ran a strong campaign ahead of
Sunday's vote and was seen as having a good chance of completing a
remarkable political comeback with victory.
 
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